Tuesday, April 7, 2015

So if Barack Obama is selling us out to the Iranians for a peace deal, what about this guy?

Delivering his Easter message from St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican Sunday, the pope gave his backing to the nuclear deal reached between Iran, the United States, China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom and Germany.

“In hope we entrust to the merciful Lord the framework recently agreed to in Lausanne, that it may be a definitive step toward a more secure and fraternal world,” the pope told the throngs of followers gathered in the rain.

Sunday, April 5, 2015

To assess the impact of the accord that the United States and its partners reached with Iran on Thursday, it is useful to start with five bottom lines. To what questions are 15,000, 12,000, 10, 5, and 0 the answers?

15,000 is the number of pounds of low-enriched uranium that would be neutralized.

5 is the number of bombs’ worth of low-enriched uranium that would be neutralized.

0 is the number of bombs’ worth of plutonium that Iran would be able to produce.

Of course, the framework accord still has to be translated into a more specific, binding agreement. And even more important, assuming that is done, the agreement has to be implemented. But if this happens, a state that currently has seven bombs’ worth of enriched uranium and 19,000 centrifuges, and is six weeks away from breaking out to produce the core of a bomb, will have been pushed back materially on each of these fronts. Moreover, the route to a bomb using plutonium rather than uranium, which Iran has pursued for over a decade at its Arak facility, will have been abandoned.

[…]

By eliminating 12,000 centrifuges and five bombs’ worth of low-enriched uranium, the accord extends the breakout timeline for Iran to produce the highly enriched uranium core of a bomb to one year. By requiring the reconfiguration of Iran’s planned plutonium-producing reactor at Arak, the accord essentially closes this door to a bomb. And by agreeing to establish a new mechanism that will allow unprecedented access for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to suspicious nuclear sites anywhere in Iran, the accord makes it much more difficult for Iran to cheat.

Between this framework accord and a final agreement lie many difficult negotiations. On literally hundreds of specific items, there are countless devils in the details. From my personal analysis of the challenge posed by Iran’s nuclear ambitions, many of these details matter more than the announced constraints on Iran’s enrichment activity at its declared facilities. Most important for me will be requirements for transparency and verification that maximize the likelihood that if Iran attempts to develop nuclear weapons at a covert facility, intelligence communities in the United States and other nations will discover that fact before Iran reaches its goals.

In sum, the Obama administration and its indefatigable secretary of state deserve a hearty round of applause for what has been achieved at this point. What remains to be done will be even more difficult, and in the longer run more significant, in stopping Iran short of a nuclear bomb.

Suddenly, Mike Pence, the bag of hammers who is for the moment governor of Indiana, wakes on a lovely day in Indianapolis and discovers that he’s pretty much the sole occupant of the Bigot Archipelago.

Georgia’s version of this law likely has breathed its last. And, for a while, it looked like Arkansas was going to follow Indiana into the gorge of eternal peril. But then the CEO of Walmart announced that these religious liberty restoratives were inconsistent with Walmart’s social conscience. (Apparently, he owns an electron microscope.) Then, in what I am certain is purely coincidental, Governor Asa Hutchinson not only came out in opposition to the Arkansas law, he threw it back into the legislature whence it had come to his desk.

To ensure that the state is “a place of tolerance,” Mr. Hutchinson said, he was considering using an executive order that would seek to balance the “competing constitutional obligations” if the legislature declined to make changes to the bill. “What is important from an Arkansas standpoint is one, we get the right balance,” he said, “and secondly, we make sure that we communicate we’re not going to be a state that fails to recognize the diversity of our workplace, our economy and our future.”

Translation from the original WeaselSpeak: Good god, Pence is an idiot. Bring yo’ bidness to Arkansas!

And, for those of you keeping score at home, the following is a partial list of the institutions that are more progressive and that make more sense on this issue than Mike Pence does.

In the last twenty-four hours, much of the mainstream media has shown itself perfectly willing to serve as agents of Satan (or should I use Moloch to make you feel better?). Most of the news anchors, reporters, and opinion writers of the press are perfectly fine forcing you to violate your conscience as long as they do not have to. They have suddenly discovered Jesus dined with sinners. They just ignore that he said “go and sin no more.” There is no evidence Jesus baked a cake to celebrate sin, but the media wants you to think he did. Just pay no attention to the guy in the Bible who spoke the most about hell fire. Oh wait, that would be the very same Jesus.

…and the greatest of these is charity.

When even Walmart’s figured that out, it’s time to wonder where your soul went.

The New Ball Game — Jay Martel at The New Yorker has some suggestions on how to speed up the game.

Once a hitter enters the batter’s box, he will be required to keep at least one foot in the box until the end of his at-bat. The foot cannot be prosthetic; it must be attached by musculature to the hitter’s body. Hitters may leave the box under certain circumstances, including a wild pitch, a play on the bases, or catching on fire. In the event of an at-bat that lasts for more than three hours, the player can be brought water and snacks. If a hitter dies of natural causes, he may be removed, headfirst.

Three timers will be placed in all Major League stadiums. The first will count down the number of seconds that have elapsed between pitches; a second will track the minutes between innings; and a third will tally the hours of game-watching that the fans will never get back as they march inexorably toward death.

Relief pitchers will be encouraged to warm up at home.

Hitters may adjust their athletic cups only as they approach the batter’s box. Once in the box, they can touch themselves only to swat at an insect or to punctuate a sentence such as “You know who likes pizza? This guy!” Pitchers will be allowed to pick up the rosin bag only fifteen times between batters. They may, however, absolutely go to town on the bills of their caps, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

Managers can no longer rush onto the field to challenge a call. Instead, robots with painted frowning faces loosely based on the managers’ actual faces will roll onto the field to confront umpires with angry whirring noises. These robots will all be programmed to return to the dugout within two minutes.

A batter who hits ten foul balls in a single at-bat is allowed to take first base. The team in the field will then have five minutes to chase him down and try to get first base back from him. If it fails, the batter’s team wins the game.

Only the Chipmunks’ version of “We Will Rock You” will be permitted at Major League stadiums. The organ music leading up to the crowd shouting “Charge!” will be scaled down from six notes to four. The lyrics to “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” will now be “Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks/At a reasonable hour I’d like to get back.” There are no other lyrics.

The instant-replay system will be streamlined as follows: the manager will signal to the umpire that the play is being challenged. (A written form is no longer necessary.) The umpire will then relay the request to the replay booth by firing a track pistol three times into the air. The replay official will then rewind the game tape using state-of-the-art beta technology. Assuming that there are no snags or threading issues, the official will promptly watch the play and decide whether to uphold the call or change it. After a document is prepared verifying the official decision and this document is signed, sealed, and sent via pneumatic tubing to the office of the commissioner, a semaphore signal will be given to the umpire, who will make the appropriate call. If this process takes longer than thirty-five minutes, the challenge is automatically rescinded.

If a game lasts more than twelve innings, sabres will be supplied to twenty fans from each side. The team with the most surviving members after the ensuing melee wins. All feet must be cleared from the batter’s box before the next game.

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

After hearing about another execution of an American journalist held hostage by ISIS, the visceral reaction comes easily. Even the most even-tempered and non-violent soul finds the gorge rising in their throat and the simple solutions easily form in the mind: “Find them, kill them, and make sure they know who did it and why.”

We have the forces; we have the means and the power to hunt down these wretched fanatics and grind them to powder. There is no place on the planet they can hide. We got bin Laden, so why can’t we marshal all the secret weapons and black ops teams like the ones we see on TV? Why isn’t a bullet between the eyes the way to do it?

Because it’s what they want. It is what they are counting on. To ISIS and al-Qaeda, life is expendable and replaceable. One more dead leader to them means they replace him with another; one more drone attack by us furthers their cause and draws new men to their cause. We have been taking out their leaders since before we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and still they grow. We took out the most hunted man in the world and that hasn’t stopped them from replacing him.

We are seeing the consequences of being goaded into war. We are seeing the result of generations of exploitation and lorded-over exceptionalism and self-styled supremacy. The attacks against the West are not because we are not Muslim; they attack people of their own faith. They are using religion as a facade in the same way a bigot uses the bible to justify racism, homophobia, and misogyny, and they allow their visceral hatred of those that bullied them to control their actions as well. Their only hope is that we will respond in kind. And we have.

We have given them what they want: attention and aggression. The difference is that we have our limits and they do not because they believe they have nothing left to lose. They also know there are powerful voices in America and the West who counsel peace and standing down the war machinery. They hope those voices will be drowned out by the chants for war and blood and vengeance.

It is hard to resist the urge to destroy those who hate us. But one hundred years of war and tension and world-wide suffering have not brought the peace. War breeds more war, and those of us who struggle to keep our rage in check must prevail so that a calculated act of unspeakable cruelty is not met with the same. Because it only leads to more blood, more sorrow and another hundred years of human misery wrought by miserable humans.

No, I don’t know the answer. Peace has never been easy or a bargain; you have to pay for it. It means overcoming prejudice and tribalism, two of nature’s more powerful visceral instincts. If we cannot overcome them, the least we can do is control them and not let the epitaph of humanity be “It all started when they hit us back.”

Friday, March 29, 2013

The Southeastern Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) always coincides with Easter weekend. It’s not that Quakers acknowledge or celebrate Easter (some do, some don’t), but it’s usually a time when families can gather at the retreat center in central Florida and have a good and meaningful time together.

My friend (and Friend) Steve took this picture on Wednesday as Friends gathered.

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Sunday, February 17, 2013

Obama’s LBJ Moment — David Rohde on how Barack Obama’s war on inequality matches the efforts of the war on poverty.

He quoted Jack Kennedy but sounded more like Lyndon Johnson.

In an audacious State of the Union address Tuesday, President Barack Obama made sweeping proposals to reduce poverty, revive the middle class and increase taxes on the “well off.” While careful to not declare it outright, an emboldened second-term president laid out an agenda that could be called a “war on inequality.”

“There are communities in this country where no matter how hard you work, it is virtually impossible to get ahead,” Obama declared in a blunt attack one a core conservative credo. “And that’s why we need to build new ladders of opportunity into the middle class for all who are willing to climb them.”

In his 1964 State of the Union address, Johnson introduced the legislation that became known as the “War on Poverty.” Those laws – along with many others he shepherded – stand today as perhaps the greatest legislative achievement of any modern president. Whether or not one agrees with him, Johnson’s laws – from the Civil Rights Act, to Medicaid, Medicare and Head Start, to sweeping federal urban renewal and education programs – changed the face of American society.

Obama, of course, is very different from LBJ and governing in a vastly different time. While Johnson excelled at cajoling legislators, Obama reportedly finds it distasteful. Where Johnson could offer new federal programs, Obama must maneuver in an age where the federal government is distrusted. And while Johnson had full government coffers, Obama lives in an era of crushing fiscal constraint.

Those differences, though, make Obama’s second inaugural address and Tuesday’s State of the Union all the more remarkable. As Richard W. Stevenson noted in the New York Times, “he continued trying to define a 21st-century version of liberalism that could outlast his time in office and do for Democrats what Reagan did for Republicans.”

There are some disturbing similarities between the Obama white paper and the Bush torture memos. Both use slippery legal language to parse dark government programs. Both have been deliberately hidden from public and even congressional oversight. And both involve the blurring of C.I.A. and military operations, and even include some of the same personnel. John Brennan, Obama’s nominee to direct the C.I.A., is a long-time veteran of the agency who, prior to joining the Obama Administration, served as chief of staff for former C.I.A. director George Tenet, under the Bush Administration during the depths of the torture scandal. Despite this, several human-rights experts have endorsed Brennan’s promotion, and Obama seems to respect him deeply. Whether that trust is well-placed remains to be seen; Brennan’s refusal, during his Senate confirmation hearings last week, to admit that waterboarding—the partial drowning of a prisoner—is a form of torture was a chilling display of institutional loyalty.

Clearly there are plenty of troubling questions surrounding the Obama Administration’s targeted-killing program. But, that said, are Obama’s drones comparable in terms of human-rights violations, to Bush’s Torture program?

Those who argue so miss an important distinction, one that David Cole also has brought up: torture under all our systems of law—including the laws of war—is illegal. This is true without exception, regardless of the circumstances, including national-security emergencies. Torture is also condemned by every major religion. Waterboarding was, and is, a form of torture. This has been established as far back as the Spanish Inquisition, and as recently as the Vietnam War. To argue otherwise is to legalize criminality. That was what the Bush Administration’s torture memos did.

During the day, our dog Mystique is sweet and demure, but at night she becomes a different animal. She guards our house, barking ferociously every time someone comes within earshot. The only problem is that our house is on the main trail where the night staff walk back and forth after dark. Mystique dutifully barks at all passersby whether she has known them for a day or all her life. But if there was really a cause for concern, like a strange man with a gun, I wonder if Mystique would bark in a way that would alert me that there was something dangerous and different about the person approaching the house.

Dog vocalizations may not sound very sophisticated. Raymond Coppinger pointed out that most dog vocalizations consist of barking, and that barking seems to occur indiscriminately. Coppinger reported on a dog whose duty was to guard free-ranging livestock. The dog barked continuously for seven hours, even though no other dogs were within miles. If barking is communicative, dogs would not bark when no one could hear them. It seemed to Coppinger that the dog was simply relieving some inner state of arousal. The arousal model is that dogs do not have much control over their barking. They are not taking into account their audience, and their barks carry little information other than their emotional state.

Perhaps barking is another by-product of domestication. Unlike dogs, wolves rarely bark. Barks make up as little as 3 percent of wolf vocalizations. Meanwhile, the experimental foxes in Russia bark when they see people, while the control foxes do not. Frequent barking when aroused is probably another consequence of selecting against aggression.

However, more recent research indicates that there might be more to barking than we first thought. Dogs have fairly plastic vocal cords, or a “modifiable vocal tract.” Dogs might be able to subtly alter their voices to produce a wide variety of different sounds that could have different meanings. Dogs might even be altering their voices in ways that are clear to other dogs but not to humans. When scientists have taken spectrograms, or pictures, of dog barks, it turns out that not all barks are the same — even from the same dog. Depending on the context, a dog’s barks can vary in timing, pitch and amplitude. Perhaps they have different meanings.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

The Nobel Peace Prize went to an empty chair to represent the place where Chinese literary critic Liu Xiaobo would have sat.Deja Vu: Bill Clinton met with President Obama yesterday, then spoke to the press.

Joe Miller loses a round in his legal battle to win the Senate election in Alaska.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Myanmar’s detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi greeted cheering crowds at the gate of her house, NBC News reported, after a release order was read to her by the authorities. However it was still unclear if she would accept any conditions of her release and whether she would talk to media, NBC News said.

Suu Kyi, whose latest term of detention was due to expire Saturday, could refuse to sign the release order, depending on whether conditions have been imposed.

Amid jubilant scenes, she told her supporters “we must work together in unison to achieve our goals,” according to a report by the U.K.’s Sky News.

The official, who demanded anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, spoke shortly after three official cars entered her compound.

Hundreds of supporters of the Nobel peace prize laureate had gathered outside her home and party office on Saturday, chanting for her freedom after seven years of detention by the country’s military junta.

Before her appearance, the crowd of about 1,000 people who were waiting near her lakeside house chanted “Release Aung San Suu Kyi” and “Long live Aung San Suu Kyi”. Some wore T-shirts emblazoned with messages pledging to stand with her.

Every time I see a bunch of people running around in silly hats carrying misspelled signs screaming about “Fascism” and threats to democracy because gay people want to get married in America, I think of this woman who has been held prisoner in Burma. It puts it all in perspective.

Friday, October 8, 2010

Liu Xiaobo, an impassioned literary critic, political essayist and democracy advocate repeatedly jailed by the Chinese government for his writings, won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in recognition of “his long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.”

Mr. Liu, 54, perhaps China’s best known dissident, is currently serving an 11-year term on subversion charges.

China lashed out at the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision, calling it a blasphemy.

“Liu Xiaobo is a criminal who has been sentenced by Chinese judicial departments for violating Chinese law,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement quoted by The Associated Press. The committee’s decision “runs completely counter to the principle of the prize and is also a blasphemy to the peace prize.” It said the decision would damage relations between China and Norway.

Mr. Liu is the first Chinese citizen to win the Peace Prize and one of three laureates to have received it while in prison.

In awarding the prize to Mr. Liu, the Norwegian Nobel Committee delivered an unmistakable rebuke to Beijing’s authoritarian leaders at a time of growing intolerance for domestic dissent and spreading unease internationally over the muscular diplomacy that has accompanied China’s economic rise.

In a move that in retrospect may have been counterproductive, a senior Chinese official recently warned the Norwegian committee’s chairman that giving the prize to Mr. Liu would adversely affect relations between the two countries.

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Thursday, August 19, 2010

NEAR THE IRAQ-KUWAIT BORDER — The last U.S. combat troops were crossing the border into Kuwait on Thursday morning, bringing to a close the active combat phase of a 7½-year war that overthrew the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein, forever defined the presidency of George W. Bush and left more than 4,400 American service members and tens of thousands of Iraqis dead.

The final convoy of the Army’s 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, based at Fort Lewis, Wash., began entering Kuwait about 1:30 a.m. (6:30 p.m. Wednesday ET), carrying the last of the 14,000 U.S. combat forces in Iraq, said NBC’s Richard Engel, who has been traveling with the brigade as it moved out this week.

The departure marks the official end of Operation Iraqi Freedom, P.J. Crowley, a spokesman for the State Department, told msnbc [sic] TV. But while it is “an historic moment,” he said, it is not the end of the U.S. mission in Iraq.

“We are ending the war … but we are not ending our work in Iraq,” he said. “We have a long-term commitment to Iraq.”

We should never have gone there in the first place. That said, the men and women who did their duty as they were ordered to do served with honor, and we owe them the respect they have earned and deserve. Welcome home.

We have paid a huge price in their blood and our treasure. It will be years before the toll is finally counted and we may never know how many lives were lost or destroyed. I hold them all — everyone, from every country and the civilians who were trapped in this misbegotten folly — in the Light and hope they find peace and quiet. For those thousands of Americans who died and the countless more who were lost in the crossfire, I mourn them for the lives and the loved ones they left behind.

Friday, October 9, 2009

OSLO (AP) — President Barack Obama on Friday won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” the committee said. “His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”

Obama’s name had been mentioned in speculation before the award but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to award the president.

The committee said it attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

“Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play.”

Oh, it’s going to be fun to watch the right wing go completely nuts over this. Expect the usual suspects to rail against those socialist Norwegians with their national health care and stuff, and I’m sure that at least one nutball is going to claim that the real reason President Obama went to Copenhagen last week wasn’t to campaign for the Chicago Olympics but to put the fix in for his win of the Prize. (Um, Copenhagen is in Denmark, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the Nobel Prize, but all those Scandinavians look alike.)

It will also feed the meme that the Peace Prize, having gone in recent years to the likes of Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Yasir Arafat, Nelson Mandela, and Mother Teresa, is a pale shadow of its former self and is now nothing but a sop for the bleeding heart liberals who do nothing but go around the world and try to get everyone to just get along. (I expect they’re forgetting that there was once a move afoot to petition the Nobel Committee to give the prize to George W. Bush. How’d that work out?) One talking point that’s already circulating (Juan Williams at NPR hinted at it) is that this isn’t about President Obama at all — what’s he done to deserve it? — it’s a slap in the face to the eight years of Bush’s neocon swagger. After all, peace has a well-known liberal bias.

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Friday, March 27, 2009

David Brooks is fresh back from Afghanistan. He reports that the war there is winnable and lists the reasons why.

[I]t is simply wrong to say that Afghanistan is a hopeless 14th-century basket case. This country had decent institutions before the Communist takeover. It hasn’t fallen into chaos, the way Iraq did, because it has a culture of communal discussion and a respect for village elders. The Afghans have embraced the democratic process with enthusiasm.

I finish this trip still skeptical but also infected by the optimism of the truly impressive people who are working here. And one other thing:

After the trauma in Iraq, it would have been easy for the U.S. to withdraw into exhaustion and realism. Instead, President Obama is doubling down on the very principles that some dismiss as neocon fantasy: the idea that this nation has the capacity to use military and civilian power to promote democracy, nurture civil society and rebuild failed states.

I am old enough to remember reading columns that had the same hopeful outlook about Vietnam in 1965. And while I sure don’t wish our efforts or our soldiers any ill will — after all, this is the place we should have devoted our full attention to after the attacks on September 11, 2001, not Iraq, and the Taliban is truly a dangerous entity — I wonder just how much insight Mr. Brooks or anyone can truly gain in six days and emerge as sure of victory as he is.

Our goal in the Vietnam war was to have it emerge as a peaceful and productive nation with a stable government. That goal was achieved: today Vietnam is a stable nation and willing trading partner with us, selling us everything from tennis shoes to raw materials. The catch is that it was achieved at a horrible price — millions of lives lost and scars that we still re-open every time someone runs for president if the United States — all because we tried to impose our will on a nation and culture that was engaged in its own civil war, we backed a corrupt and cynical regime simply because they said they weren’t Commies, and we lost. How similar is that to Afghanistan? Logistically it’s a whole different world, and it can be argued that we have a duty to hunt down the people who attacked us, but is the goal that much different? This time we need to remember that Afghanistan belongs to the Afghans and as hard as it might be to accept, not everyone in the world wants what we have.

No one in their right mind wants us to fail in Afghanistan, and no one in their right mind wants the return to the Middle Ages represented by religious fanaticism — in any form from any belief system. But we can’t forget that what may emerge in that rugged nation isn’t what we want for the Afghans, but it should be what they want.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Missing — Two NFL players are missing after going out into the Gulf of Mexico from Clearwater, Florida, in a 21-foot boat on Saturday.

Support for Sebelius — HHS nominee Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D-KS) gets support from her two Republican senators.

Even the wingnuts think they’re crazy — Ben Smith reports that the folks who think President Obama isn’t a U.S. citizen is making mainstream conservatives and a few far-righters uncomfortable with their lunacy.

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